Banbury’s cup hopes will be put to the test

Lloyd Sabin faces his first double-header of the season but the Banbury captain will be missing for one of them.

Banbury travel to Horspath for Saturday’s Home Counties Premier Cricket League fixture and the following day entertain Lutterworth in the ECB National Club Championship.

We did the small things really well but there are still aspects we need to improve on

Banbury captain Lloyd Sabin

But, with Oxon also in action on Sunday, Sabin will miss the Group 12 fixture with the Leicestershire club. Banbury will also be without Richard West, Olly Wright and possibly Jamie Curtis.

Looking ahead to Saturday’s trip to newly-promoted Horspath, Sabin said: “Horspath are a hard working side and they’ve been together for a long time. Hopefully, our overseas player Aizaz Cheema will be here in time, if not, we’ll go with more or less the same squad plus Olly Clark, who is now available.”

Looking back on Saturday’s opening day victory over Tring Park, Sabin said: “It was a good start and nice to win the first game. We did the small things really well but there are still aspects we need to improve on.

“Tring had a couple of decent batsmen who could have produced some big scores. We need to field better as a unit and limit the opposition batsmen’s options when one of them starts scoring well.”

Sabin was delighted to see Tom Bartlett and century-maker Craig Haupt form a good opening partnership, adding: “Tom has really matured as a batsman, he’s always had a good eye for the ball but now he’s being more selective about his shots.

“But we didn’t make the most of our good start he and Craig gave us. I felt we were 30 runs short, we only scored 60 off the last ten overs with plenty of wickets in hand.”